Alana Pena
Appearances
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Disney Is a Tech Company?
I remember it very well. It was the meeting that changed my life.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Disney Is a Tech Company?
I wrote it on spec, meaning I wrote a script that nobody asked for except my agents.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Disney Is a Tech Company?
Everything seems possible. There were so many networks, it felt like every writer that I was working with in the room had a show in the works, or if they didn't, they were talking about having a show in the works.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Disney Is a Tech Company?
My agent was like, there's this new component of Disney launching. It's called Disney Plus. And she knew the exec over there. She was like, she has excellent taste. I'm going to send the script over.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Disney Is a Tech Company?
It was a coming-of-age story about her, her brother, her widowed mom. And then the thing that she doesn't know but the audience knows is that she becomes president.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Disney Is a Tech Company?
It's my old diary. I started writing it in the sixth grade. It's a day-by-day account of how I got here. I really had a lot to say. I wanted to basically tell the story inspired by my adolescence and growing up, but I didn't want her to become a television writer.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Disney Is a Tech Company?
Disney Plus had said they wanted a lot. They wanted to have original shows. They wanted to have original creators. It seemed like they wanted to be a competitor for Netflix, for Amazon, in terms of the original space. You know, not be beholden to IP.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Disney Is a Tech Company?
The thing that was the worst part of all of it, I had to tell all the kids who are in it that it was being taken off the platform. And they don't have context for that, or at least they didn't, because everything that they've ever wanted to watch, they have been able to watch their whole lives. The kids were pretty devastated. Yeah.